The Big 3 Moat

Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and the developmental ouroboros

I usually don’t write about the ‘Big 3’ of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic in any general sense with one recent exception. For the most part, The Racquet is about topical things happening in tennis like matchplay & play-style analysis, or bigger picture developments in the sport. At this point enough attention is already paid to those three players, often at the expense of everyone else, and there are enough thought-pieces about Federer, Nadal and Djokovic released each week to populate circle-jerks on various forums and subreddits for years to come.

But the Big 3 are, to the joy of some and the horror of others, still winning. Last year it was Djokovic. Throughout the start of this year it’s been Nadal. And because, unlike much of modern life, sport is still unequivocally zero sum, these ageing legends winning means someone else losing, without exception. They’re still beating the game even into their mid-late thirties, and prompting inevitable discussion about competition strength and rivalries. So I’m going to write about them.

Landscape

Much has already been said about certain environmental reasons for the Big 3’s abnormal levels of success. The rather protective change from 16 to 32 seeds at the Slams from 2001 onwards, which made it impossible for the stars of the game to play another top 30 player before the 3rd round, and statistically chopped about 5% off the upset risk of the top ranked players in week one of Slams (we nearly went back to 16 seeds in 2019 but this plan was nixed after complaints from elite players and broadcasters)¹. The much narrated homogenization of tennis surfaces, allegedly creating a more domination-friendly landscape. Although here I’d contend that having 65% of the elite calendar played on hard courts, along with certain coaching methodologies and technological advances (racquet and string), are far more responsible for homogenous skill-sets and playstyles than any speed differences in clay and grass conditions in recent years. Modern medicine and sports science advances have also made recovery, injury prevention, and general conditioning superior in many ways compared to previous generations, thereby helping the Big 3 stay healthy, and stay winning, long into their late careers.

Finally, clever observers have been noting a potential dip in competition level in some of the chasing pack nipping at the Big 3’s heels for years now. But while there are certainly peaks and valleys of competition year to year in tennis and all sport, it can be tough to tease apart how much of this current example is a ‘lost’ or ‘weak’ generation, and how much of it is the Big 3 suppressing that competition, and ranking/progress mobility, by being too damn good. After all, for every big match the Big 3 have won, and they’ve won a lot of them, a younger challenger has to lose and their progress halted. And because the Big 3 have been winning for so long and, as a group, so uninterruptedly, multiple generations have been stunted success-wise². The Big 3’s collective careers have created what may be a once in a lifetime competitive ripple effect, with those ripples disturbing the progress of an enormous pool of players unfortunate enough to merely exist at the same time in history. Big wins over ageing legends often offer up huge breakthroughs of belief and momentum for the younger player, for e.g 19 year old Federer beating Sampras at Wimbledon 2001 or 19 year old Nadal beating Agassi in the 2005 Montreal final. The older legends always inspire the next generations, but the youth often usurps those legends in significant ‘passing of the torch’ moments. Federer, Nadal and Djokovic really don’t seem to have gotten the memo about this latter bit. They largely refuse to be usurped, at least when it really matters, and stingily refuse to offer up those breakthroughs without another one of the trio providing a subsequent reality check. This was why Daniil Medvedev’s win in New York against Novak Djokovic last September felt so significant — finally a younger player toppling the hegemony of the Big 3 in a Slam final, the toughest and deepest of their moats. We were probably mere points away from Medvedev backing up that win with another over Nadal in the Australian Open final in January (it’s hard to overstate how different the narrative would be right now had Medvedev won that match). But part of what makes the Big 3 so absurdly resilient as gatekeepers of tennis’ biggest titles is that their success dovetails. Nadal picked up the slack in Melbourne, put in some running repairs to the shallowing moat, and stifled progress of the next generation once again. Medvedev turned 26 last month.

Improvement

One of the primary reasons for those three players becoming the greatest of all time, outside of the rather obvious fact that they are three extraordinary people with extraordinary drives to succeed and improve, is their rivalries with one another.

The caveat here is that there are inevitable differences between the three player’s motivations and drives to succeed. Nadal in particular has commented that it’s…

“…not just for my rivals. I’m just trying – my approach to that is I always wanted to be a better tennis player, because I understand the sport like this. I understand the sport going on a practice session every day with the goal to improve something, with the goal to be better.”

But, obvious pitfalls of grouping these three players together as one amorphous blob of tennis skill and personality aside, it’s hard to believe that the versions of the those three players, that exist in a universe without the other two competing alongside them, are as good or as complete. In that parallel universe the lone Big 3 member could well have more titles without his two biggest rivals to trophy-block, but it’s reasonable to speculate that the level of ability wouldn’t be the same.

In the other Big 3 piece from last year, I used an extremely odd piece of imagery when describing what it’s like when the very best poker, chess or Go players compete against superhuman poker/chess/Go AI built by other humans:

…even more fascinating because in this instance humans are learning from artificial intelligence that was built by other humans, a bit like some kind of developmental ouroboros. The equivalent in tennis would be a bit like if someone built a near-perfect tennis AI, with a robotic body to execute its moves, and then the very best players trained against that AI & robotic concoction to increase their own rate of progress against the comparatively weak human field.

The chess and poker players who train against superhuman AI, or use AI enabled tools, progress at a faster rate than those who solely train against other humans. And the interesting thing about the Big 3 is that all three are technically superhuman as it relates to the rest of the field. All three have trained (played) against each other more than any other player. Nadal and Djokovic have played 58 times (a men’s Open Era record), Djokovic vs Federer 50 times, and Nadal vs Federer 40 times. That’s 148 times when superhuman trained superhuman. By virtue of meeting so many times in semi-finals and finals throughout a season (including Andy Murray who has an indisputable place in this developmental arc), especially during some of their prime years around the 2007-2015 period, those players pushed each other relentlessly to surpass one another. And because not only were their baseline abilities already so high, but their rates of improvement so steep as well, progress compounded and compounded on top of itself until you have the three beasts of the game you see today.

Back to that very strange idea of a developmental ouroboros in the above quote. An ouroboros is a snake eating itself for those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the imagery. But in this analogy the Big 3 of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic would be that snake, somehow getting bigger and bigger with each self-devouring match against one another, while the other snakes (the other players) remain a more standard size at a lower rate of progress:

I’m conscious that this is an extremely weird analogy. But I think it serves its purpose for visualising the self-perpetuating nature of the Big 3’s improvement via their rivalry triad. The ouroboros (οὐροβόρος) is usually interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. This is very fitting for this Big 3 analogy as each period of wins/losses against each other, each time the snake takes another bite of itself, the three players were forced to renew their skills, their competitive edge against the field swelling further through death (loss) and rebirth (subsequent wins). Federer’s backhand had to improve because of Nadal’s ability to so ruthlessly exploit it, which is part of why one of Federer’s greatest backhand seasons came in 2017 at the ripe old age of 35 rather than at the beginning of his career. Nadal’s own backhand had to become more offensive in part to overcome the 2006 and 2007 Wimbledon final losses to Federer, resulting in a potent backhand display in the famous 2008 final. Djokovic’s fitness and resolve to be the last one standing in gruelling baseline exchanges had to improve in order to supplant the player everyone considered as the peak of matchplay toughness in 2010 (Nadal), leading to Djokovic’s major breakthrough season in 2011 (one of the all time great tennis seasons). Nadal responded to this fresh challenge partially by beefing up his own baseline aggression, most notably on hard courts in 2012 and 2013, to take another chunk out of Novak. Djokovic then responded to that challenge by working on his serve, among other tweaks, and took the game to further heights in 2015 and the beginning of 2016. The trio iteratively pushed on in terms of technical refinements, physical conditioning, and subtle strategic shifts. Spurred on by each other’s greatness, catapulting each other, and tennis, forwards via brutally effective optimisation³. Andy Murray also belongs in this conversation for pushing this group of players on. The 2012 year, widely regarded as the highest level of competition in this era, featured tournament after tournament with those four players making up the semi-final lineup. This rivalry arguably ended up pushing Murray so hard that his body gave way, finally ascending to world No.1 in 2016, against the three biggest blockers of his and everyone else’s dreams, only for the physical cost of getting there to scupper his hopes of staying in that rarified air for too long.

It’s not just how good, and how willing to improve, each of the Big 3 are though. The timing of their respective careers is also interesting because it has helped extend their collective dominance. Had Djokovic been three years younger than Nadal, rather than just one, this effect may have been even more pronounced, but with Federer emerging first (probably unlucky timing for the legacy debate), then Nadal, then Djokovic, you have this staggered career timeline for the three players that has manifested as a dovetailing, and self perpetuating, title-block for the chasing pack of players. Not only have challengers to the men’s tennis throne often had to go through 2/3 of the Big 3 when trying to win the biggest titles, but those three legend’s elite career-arcs span 20 years at this point, with Federer winning his first Slam in 2003, and Nadal winning his most recent Slam in 2022. They will not budge.

Career timing isn’t the only relevant coincidental feature of that trio’s domination. Their play-styles also play an important role. Federer is arguably the unluckiest of the three in this regard because Nadal and Djokovic ushered in, and perfected, what became the dominant play-style meta of the late 2000’s and 2010’s — the aggressive baseliner with an ability play both defence and attack with extraordinarily high margin. But the three players are sufficiently different that their experience of winning and losing against one another hasn’t overlapped too much. All three matchups offered quite distinct areas of point patterns and improvement requirements for all three players, which merely made that developmental ouroboros grow quicker and larger.

One of the main reasons rivalries are so valuable in this context is because while they may hurt the title count of each participant of that rivalry, they also mean that there’s potential for fewer plateaus. A player who reaches the top of the game and doesn’t have a particularly fierce rival may continue to dominate because their level is just better, or perhaps they would become complacent and see little reason to improve. Federer was the best player in the world in the mid 2000’s. But Nadal and Djokovic subsequently entered the fray and the Swiss was forced to improve and rethink parts of the game everyone had already ordained as perfect. Only the genius of Nadal, Djokovic, and Murray could see and exploit those Federer flaws regularly enough, and the same mostly goes for prime Nadal and Djokovic. This is where rivalries and superhuman competition pay most of their dividend — great rivals see flaws, and they force the improvement of those flaws, that no one else can. The Big 3 had more opportunity to practice, swelling their abilities, against fellow super-humans. Admittedly they could do so only because they possessed already great foundations of skill and desire, even before most of the 148 matches. But the rivalries pushed those already sky-high baselines of ability to new heights which no one, not even the inexorable march of incoming youth and time, has been able to match thus far. The Big 3’s rivalries have maximised their potential of tennis ability, even if they’ve dented each other’s trophy hauls.

Since 2017-ish, all now post-prime into their 30’s, not only have the Big 3 continued to adapt (Nadal and Djokovic’s serves, and volleys, getting better and better for e.g), but their developmental edge from that 148 match training block, has endured. The Big 3 seem to know ways to win matches and points that the younger generations can’t fathom. You can see small chunks of experience from playing amongst one another, both physical and technical, manifest again and again as advantages when the Big 3 clash with each new generation. Massive experience of managing energy during arduous 5 set matches⁴, weathering opponent’s purple patches, playing with a lead and playing from behind, how to manage risk-reward on influential points et al. And while every player builds this resume of experience at the elite level, the Big 3 have that added advantage of weathering all of those scenarios against fellow superhumans — each other. If you train relentlessly against a superhuman AI in chess and then drop down to human opponents, you’ll probably start winning. The same goes for Federer, Nadal, Djokovic. They competed constantly against the peak of tennis competition for the better part of two decades. Meeting anyone else is like dropping back down into the more forgiving, human arena⁵.

It’s not surprising to see regular, gleeful posts from younger players getting to practice with Federer, Nadal, Djokovic or Murray. Playing practice sets against those players might as well be experiential gold dust. They do things other players don’t. They have moves and shots other players don’t. They handle pressure in ways other players don’t. Funnily enough there’s probably even an argument that practicing against those three players may actually be unhelpful for younger players when it comes to applying their tennis against the rest of the tour, simply because the rest of the tour don’t do many of the same things. Practicing against Federer’s all time great slice backhand for example probably isn’t that helpful for preparing to beat the currently top ranked young trio of Medvedev, Zverev or Tsitsipas, none of whom use their slices often or effectively. But Nadal’s slice backhand for example, one of the most improved shots in tennis, has become an essential weapon in his general domination of the younger generations in his late-career. And that slice started improving, in part, because of his rivalry with Federer and Djokovic⁶. So will the younger players, who got to meet the Big 3 the most often before they retire, have a subsequent edge over the rest of the field? Maybe. Will they have met enough times, at high enough stakes, to have rubbed off on the younger players in a meaningful way? Maybe not. It’s an interesting part of what the competitive landscape will look like when the Big 3 retire.

The Big 3 rivalries matter less and less these days, largely because they meet much less often than in their respective heydays. By now they’ve accumulated and absorbed each others greatness by competitive osmosis and honed their games to the pinnacle of tennis ability. This pinnacle has been too good for every chasing pack that has come and gone, partly because, despite some really interesting play-style evolutions in the next generations, none of those chasing packs have yet experienced the developmental intensity of the Big 3’s rivalry with one another. What this means is that, sadly for some and impressively for others, the Big 3 have essentially transcended the threat of being truly usurped. Those three legends will lose their grip on men’s tennis (it’s already softer than it was a year or so ago and will probably continue to loosen this and next year), but they’ll do so because of ageing decline, rather than the chasing pack really snatching the torch. This is an uncomfortable notion for many but it does need to be acknowledged at some point. Some will point to a valley of competition strength. Others will point to a peak of Big 3 tennis ability. But ultimately the only ground truth that remains is that Federer, Nadal and Djokovic were collectively too good for all comers over a period of 20 years (and counting). Those three players will be gone soon enough, some sooner than others, and we will then likely see more modest forms of domination, or perhaps a chaos era, unless fans are lucky enough to see another intense rivalry triangle emerge between the likes of Alcaraz, Sinner, and Rune. While we hope for more golden generations to come, take solace in knowing that you have watched the three greatest men’s tennis players compete. And that their astonishing rivalries created a rare moment in time where superhumans clashed noisily and earnestly over and over, pushing this sport to its zenith, only to redefine what that meant year after year.

— MW

Twitter: @mattracquet

See you on Thursday.

Top: PA Images via Getty

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1. There’s debate either way about 16 vs 32 seeds. If you only have 16 seeds then you get more upsets in the early rounds and greater opportunity for progress mobility for lower ranked players, which one could certainly argue is more exciting. But that also means fewer big names in the marquee 2nd week matches, which one could also argue is bad for ratings.

2. Between the 2014 Australian Open and Wimbledon 2021 I counted 40 matches where the Big 4 (Murray included) beat a player that would have been considered a promising ‘next gen’ at a Slam. That’s at least 40 times where an up and coming player had their progress halted, and at least 40 scenarios where there are parallel universes where that younger player’s trajectory was steeper than in the universe where they lost. This would expand to well over 100 when you factor in the whole Big 3 era of 2003-2022 ish.

3. There are many, many small and large areas of improvements by the Big 3. I didn’t really want to go into too much detail here due to the long span of their rivalries but I will probably write a timeline for those improvements in another piece.

4. Although there are other, unfortunate, reasons for the Best of 5 edge:

Matthew Willis @mattracquet

We have now reached the point where there is no Bof5 matchplay preparation for the slams. The big 4 grew up with Davis Cup Bof5, Olympics Bof5, Masters 1000 finals Bof5. Kids coming up now have a jarring disconnect between everything-else vs slams in terms of focus and stamina.

5. Related:

Matthew Willis @mattracquet

A good thing about Nadal Djokovic matches is that they ruthlessly reveal how well either of them are truly playing. They can (not always, but can) win sub-par vs the field. But they’ll almost always have to play their best tennis for at least part of the match to beat each other

6. Against Djokovic especially, Nadal’s ever-improving slice down the line, low into the Djokovic backhand, was one of the more reliable ways to set up the forehands he wants to attack.